Child in Texas is 1st swine flu death in U.S.

LAURAN NEERGAARDAP Medical Writer

Wednesday

Apr 29, 2009 at 7:06 AM

Virulent swine flu spread to 10 U.S. states from coast to coast Wednesday and swept deeper into Europe, extending its global reach as the U.S. was hit with the first flu death outside of Mexico — a Mexican toddler who had traveled with his family to Texas.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Virulent swine flu spread to 10 U.S. states from coast to coast Wednesday and swept deeper into Europe, extending its global reach as the U.S. was hit with the first flu death outside of Mexico — a Mexican toddler who had traveled with his family to Texas. Total American cases surged to nearly 100.

The World Health Organization said the outbreak is moving closer to becoming a full-scale pandemic. But in Mexico City, the mayor said the outbreak there seemed to be stabilizing.

In Washington, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano was questioned closely by senators about whether the U.S. should close its border with Mexico, where the outbreak apparently began and the casualties have been the greatest, with more than 150 deaths. She repeated the administration's position that questioning of people at borders and ports of entry was sufficient for now and said closing borders "has not been merited by the facts."

Dr. Richard Besser, the acting chief of the Centers for Disease Control, said in Atlanta that there are confirmed cases now in ten states, with 51 in New York, 14 in California and 16 in Texas, where officials said Wednesday they were postponing all public high school athletic and academic competitions until May 11. Two cases have been confirmed in Kansas, Massachusetts and Michigan, while a single cases have been reported in Arizona, Indiana, Nevada and Ohio. State officials in Maine said laboratory tests also had confirmed three cases in that state, although those had not yet been included in the CDC count.

In a possible outbreak north of the Mexican border, the commandant of the Marine Corps said a Marine lieutenant in southern California might have the illness and 39 Marines were being confined on their California base until tests come back.

Marine General James Conway told a Pentagon briefing an initial test indicated the sick Marine — who was not identified — might have swine flu but his illness did not appear life-threatening.

President Barack Obama said he wanted to extend "my thoughts and prayers" to the family of a nearly two-year-old Mexican boy who died in Houston, the first confirmed U.S. fatality among more than five dozen infections. Health officials in Texas said the child had traveled with his family from Mexico, to Brownsville on April 4 and was brought to Houston after becoming ill. He died Monday night.

"This is obviously a serious situation," and "we are closely and continuously monitoring" it, Obama said of the spreading illness.

Laboratory testing shows the new virus is treatable by the anti-flu drugs Tamiflu and Relenza, and the first shipments from a federal stockpile arrived Wednesday in New York City and several other locations in the U.S.. The government was shipping to states enough medication to treat 11 million people as a precaution.

Meanwhile, Egypt's government ordered the slaughter of all pigs in the country as a precaution, though no swine flu cases have been reported there. Egypt's overwhelmingly Muslim population does not eat pork, but farmers raise some 300,000-350,000 pigs for the Christian minority.

The disease is not spread by eating pork, and farmers were to be allowed to sell the meat from the slaughtered animals.

In fact, officials appeared to go out of their way on Wednesday to not call the strain "swine flu." Obama called the bug the "H1N1 virus."

She said the strain is particularly worrisome because "it's a virus that hasn't been around before. The general population doesn't have immunity from it."

People have various levels of protection against other more common types of flu because they are exposed to it over time, and that protection accumulates. She suggested that some older people might have more resistance to this particular strain than younger people because its traits might resemble outbreaks of decades ago.

Germany became the latest country to report swine flu infections. It reported four cases on Wednesday.

New Zealand's total rose to 14. Britain had earlier reported five cases, Spain four. There were 13 cases in Canada, two in Israel and one in Austria.

Obama said it is the recommendation of public health officials that authorities at schools with confirmed or suspected cases of swine flu "should strongly consider temporarily closing so that we can be as safe as possible."

He was underscoring advice that the CDC provided earlier to cities and states, and that some schools — most prominently in New York City — already have followed.

"If the situation becomes more serious and we have to take more extensive steps, then parents should also think about contingencies if schools in their areas do temporarily shut down, figuring out and planning what their child care situation would be," Obama advised.

He advised people to take their own precautions — washing hands, staying home if they are sick, and keeping sick kids home.

Obama said the federal government is "prepared to do whatever is necessary to control the impact of this virus." He noted his request for $1.5 billion in emergency funding to ensure adequate supplies of vaccines.

CDC for days has said people with flulike symptoms should stay home — but now also is stressing that other family members should consider staying home or at least limiting how much they go out until they're sure they didn't catch it.

Besser, the acting CDC director, called it "an abundance of caution," but stressed that it's voluntary and that the government hasn't urged actual quarantine, which isn't really effective with flu.

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